One of Us (24 page)

“I don't have one.”

Greg leans back so he can look at me, one of his old looks.

That makes me smile again. “My social worker is here to pick me up, but I don't know where I'm going.”

Greg holds me to him. I feel his back through the soft flannel of his red-checked shirt. His hands are warm on my back. I breathe in the smell of him. I feel his heart beating, fast, just the other side of mine.

“We can be together,” he says, so softly that I'm not sure if I heard it. It's almost as if he's saying it to himself.

“Even though you don't really know me?”

“I do know you, Verity Nekton.” He tilts his head back so that he can look into my face. “I know who you are.”

For a long moment we stand there, our eyes meeting.

Greg digs in his pocket for a pen and an old Gatesbrooke bus ticket. “Here,” he says. “This is my phone number. My family and I get back in a month. Call me. I'll come and get you. OK?”

I nod. “OK.”

He pushes the gate open, but he's holding my hand, so I walk through with him. The Brothers' house is bigger than ours, with a garden and a small cul-de-sac on the side where the road from the main parking lot ends. A taxi waits there, and Greg's bags are on the porch.

I clutch the ticket in my hand as I watch Greg get
into the taxi. It drives slowly away. Then it stops. Greg's door opens. He runs back across the gravel toward me.

He holds my face between his hands, and he stares into my eyes. “Verity . . .” he says. Then we kiss. It's not a kiss-it-better good-night kiss. Not a little bit of nothing. I stop thinking about the future and the past. I feel the ticket crumpling in my fist.

“Promise me you'll call?”

I nod.

“You won't forget?”

“No.”

Then he's gone. But I can't feel sad now. Dreams do sometimes come true. Even for me.

CHAPTER 25

R
IL IS WAITING
at the top of the steps. As usual, she looks tense. But she fixes a bright smile on her face when she sees me.

I speak first. “I'll go and get my bag,” I say, walking under the arch that leads to the Sisters' house. I turn back and look through it, at Serafina and her parents, Emanuel with his arm around his mother's shoulders. Children are gathered near the strawberry table, their faces stained pink. I've done it, haven't I? I've convinced Brer Magnus that I'm a Brotherhood girl and I've passed my exams too. But the list is still in my pocket.

I run across the lawn and get out my key.
Do it quickly, before you have time to think.
Inside the house I put the latch down to lock the door, and instead of going upstairs, I go into the kitchenette.
I put the papers in the metal sink and light a match and let it crinkle up the edges with black and then gold until there's nothing but fragments of charred tissue. Then I turn on the tap and leave it running while I fetch Georgette's lemon air freshener from the bathroom. Afterward I shut the kitchen door.

I feel as if a huge weight has been lifted off me. I start humming as I run upstairs for my bag. But then there's a volley of knocks on the outside door. I grab my bags and run back down with them. I'm taking everything with me. It's not much anyway.

Ril is standing there. “I thought I'd give you a hand,” she says. “Then I'll take you to your new room.”

W
E DON
'
T TALK
much in the car. She drives into the Old City, past the Meeting Hall, which is caged around with scaffolding. I suddenly see why—it's being cleaned. Ril crosses the canal bridge and turns down toward the shoreline. Old dockyards and warehouses line the waterfront, and the sea disappears into mudflats.

She pulls up outside a boarding house. There are houses on one side of the road only. The other side is taken up by a huge old police station, built from big stones so dirty that they look black. The entrance is directly opposite the front door of the boarding house.

“Up here,” says Ril.

My spirits drop as we climb the stairs. The carpet stinks, and on the landing there is the kind of
toilet you would pay not to have to use. My room has a bed and a kitchenette.

“Here you go,” says Ril. “Now.” She sits down on the one chair.

I sit on the high narrow bed.

“A few things to run through. First, there's food in the fridge and the cabinet. Second, there's a curfew for Hoo—for Brotherhood after nine, since the bomb.”

“Can't I just wear my own clothes for the summer, then?” I don't like the idea of not being able to go out at night.

Ril looks at me pityingly. “Of course not. You're Verity Nekton now. Continuity, K.”

She stands up and takes an envelope out of her bag, “I'll meet you every week to give you your money and check in.” She hands the envelope to me.

“Oskar promised me I'd be able to contact him.”

“Oh yes, thanks for reminding me.” She takes a cell phone out too. “Here you go. I filled it up, and Oskar's and my numbers are in there. There's a load of other fake numbers in the contacts, in case it falls into the wrong hands.” She walks over to the door. “One more thing: have you got the list of people who attended the Spring Meeting?”

I walk over to the window and open it. “No.”

“What do you mean?” She frowns. “Where is it?”

I turn back to face Ril. Then I shrug. “I couldn't get it,” I say. “They've tightened up on security recently, cameras in the Meeting Hall block and everything.”

“That's disappointing, K.”

I know I should apologize, but I can't bring myself
to do it. I just stand and look back at Ril, waiting for her to go away.

“Well, that's it, then,” she says eventually.

I
DON
'
T ASK
her when I can see Oskar. I can call him myself now. But I don't. There are far too many thoughts churning around in my mind. To keep them at bay, I clean everything and unpack my stuff and make some toast. But as soon as I curl up in the chair by the window, they crowd back in.

It was so easy to tell Greg how I felt. I was so sure, I still am. But I shouldn't have done it, because I can't see how I can tell Greg what I've done and who I really am, and then carry on working for Oskar for another year. And if I tell Oskar I want to stop now, I'll have nothing. I'm nobody.

Down in the street a minibus pulls up outside the police station. Two policemen go around to the back and open the doors. It doesn't take long for them to hustle out the boys inside. And guess what? All of them are Brotherhood.

I look at my watch. Half past nine. Surely they haven't been arrested just for being out after nine? It's horrible to know that I can't go out for a walk along the seafront without risking arrest. And without the Reconciliation Agreement this is only one of the things Brotherhood people have to live with.

At least I have a TV. I turn it on and flick through the channels. Maybe Greg has changed his mind anyway. Why did I pin my hopes on a few words spoken in a hurry?

In the street below, a car shrieks to a halt and four or five Brotherhood boys in masks leap out. No, one of them is a girl. They throw something at the front of the police station, and I hear breaking glass. Then they're back in the car and screaming off again. Moments later they're followed by a police car and a van, sirens shrieking.

I think of the promise I made to Oskar. None of the reasons for doing this, being a spy, have gone away. It's just that now I don't trust him. Does he really know that only a few Brotherhood people are terrorists? These thoughts dance endlessly round and round each other in my mind.

A
MONTH PASSES
. Most days I go out sketching, filling two sketchbooks with studies of the canal towpath or the Old City buildings. Ril checks up on me once a week. I don't know why Oskar hasn't been in touch. Is it because I failed to get the list for him? Ril doesn't mention it again. There's no way around the curfew. Not with the police station opposite and no back door.

I start trying Greg's number from a pay phone. There's no way I'm going to use the phone Oskar gave me to call him. Then one day Greg answers. The weeks fly back and I'm outside the Brothers' house again, having to let him go. But now he says that he wants me to come and stay with his family in their house in the country. I say yes, and I arrange it around Ril's visits so she won't know.

I
SIT ON
the train, looking out on the rolling hills.
I'm going to see him at the next station.
That's all I can think about, as I stare out at the streams winding through soft green meadows. However strange I might look, I can't stop smiling the whole way there.

Greg is standing alone, looking up and down the platform at the train windows. His hair has grown longer over the summer, not very Brotherhood. He pushes it out of his eyes, squinting against the sunlight. He's wearing long shorts that skim his hip bones because he's gotten thinner.

He doesn't see me until I get off the train. I pull my red suitcase behind me along the platform, feeling so nervous that I'm hanging back, even though I've been longing for this moment, thinking it out so many times that now it's almost as if it's already happened.

Greg sees me. He gives me a beam of a smile: a smile I could never have imagined. We sort of hug each other, not sure whether to kiss. I didn't imagine how much I like him.